Why is Bill Gates Back at Microsoft?
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Earlier today, Microsoft named its third CEO as Satya Nadella. Nadella has a strong history in enterprise and cloud services at Microsoft, and since his appointment as CEO, many have assumed (including us) that this is the direction Microsoft is headed. Nadella is taking the reigns and steering Microsoft towards a future that focuses heavily on enterprise software, cloud computing, and big data. That's the big story of the day. But almost as big is the fact that Nadella won't be leading Microsoft alone. Indeed, he'll have some help from founder and former CEO and chairman Bill Gates.
Alongside the appointment of Nadella as CEO, Microsoft announced that Bill Gates would step down from his position as Chairman of the Board and right into the brand new role of 'Technology Advisor' to Satya Nadella. The specifics of this new role have not yet been laid out. Microsoft has only said that Gates will "devote more time to the company, supporting Nadella in shaping technology and product direction."
What does this mean? Why is Bill back? At best, the message is that Satya is the talent and leadership Microsoft needs to succeed in enterprise and cloud computing, a monstrous market, but lacks vision when it comes to consumer product and direction. At worst, Gates' presence is purely to appease shareholders who believe Microsoft needs fresh blood and a true innovator to move forward. A mix of the two is probably most likely. As we said earlier, if Microsoft can leverage its position in the work place in order to expand its reach in enterprise and take it to the next level with cloud services, it's looking at a very bright future. Satya's vision for Microsoft undoubtedly revolves around enterprise, cloud computing, and big data. He definitely doesn't need Bill to help him get there (Microsoft's revenue from Cloud Services went from $16.6 billion to $20.3 billion in the two years after Satya was put in charge of the Cloud and Enterprise group). So Gates' new role is likely just a reassurance that someone with a reputation for innovation and success is still involved, influencing decisions with sound judgement, and offering advice on products.
Investor reaction to Microsoft's announcement was positive. Shares opened at $37.11 this morning, up from yesterday's closing price of $36.48. Things have leveled off a bit as the day has worn on. At time of writing, Microsoft shares were sitting at $36.54. We'd like to see the Sliding Doors scenario where Gates wasn't a part of today's announcement, just so we could see the true reaction to Satya's appointment without the security blanket that is Bill Gates.
The good news for consumers is that two heads are, almost always, better than one. As long as Satya Nadella isn't the kind of man opposed to back-seat drivers, Bill Gates will be able to offer a lot of valuable advice in areas where Satya could probably do with some help. The end result is a stronger and better executed product vision, which is awesome for all computer users.
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As a pretty good rule of thumb, anything that comes from a conference room is garbage. Even its name reeks of MBA douche baggerey. Just call it remote storage for crying out loud.
They just don't teach enough common sense in business school I guess. There are two huge problems "The Cloud" faces. First is the fact that the price per GB of hard drives and other physical storage media will always be decreasing. So 1 TB of online storage is worth less and less as time goes by. That means the money companies invest into server equipment, ect, depreciates very quickly.
The second problem "The Cloud" faces are ever increasing privacy concerns. More and more people are figuring out, if they have something stored "In The Cloud" advertisers and all kind of three letter agencies are scanning their data for information they deem useful. People are also learning that the saying, "if you have nothing hide, you have nothing to fear" is a flat out lie. Evidence of crime is not found, it is created.
Considering how trivial it is to set up your own free remote server, using your own hardware, I just can't see how "The Cloud" can support a multi billion dollar company in a market that is becoming increasingly hostile towards privacy violations.
Toms keeps pitching this cloud crap, and it is ridiculous. I pay no attention to the IT posts now because of this. It's almost as if their IT side here, is paid to pitch clouds, cloud certs etc. STUPID. Apparently I'm not alone, as most of those posts have ZERO comments on them... Well, because any decent IT guy knows you don't want ANY data in the cloud that you actually want protected.
MS heading to the clouds...LOL. This tells me one thing: My comments that OpenGL, WebGL, HTML5 etc will take over gaming via Android, linux, SteamOS etc are correct and MS is losing the desktop along with Intel. They are now totally defensive and reactive just like any empire who has sat too long on the throne and became complacent (IE Buying nokia to sell your OS because everyone has android which is free - too late, just like buying yahoo to catch google - two losers, BING/YAHOO don't make a winner). I look forward to the new regime which will also usher in a HUGE user base of units for game devs to make money on and hopefully better/LONGER games at some point (less risk with so many units to aim at). We should get more unique titles eventually instead of Call of Duty 65/Battlefield 39 or whatever...LOL. Little indie devs can make some great games that will make them millionaires. Write for the API's I mentioned instead of DirectX and you can port everywhere cheaply and easily which helps the little guys get on the map in a way that they never could years before. These API's allow you to shoot at a few Billion units rather than a few hundred million PC's, a few hundred million consoles (~85mil each and all needing a different version and far more coding) etc. It is far easier for them to make money without WINTEL/DirectX being dominant.
First games to help make windows/Wintel less appealing. Then watch as apps follow making Wintel...Kind of like RIMM etc
Like drwho1, I'll build a nas if needed (and am looking finding a great one now). They are cheap enough now, that cloud storage is pointless to me even if I thought it was safe. For around $650 you can get 4x3TB drive and a nas which is more than enough for my needs. Anything outside your house, or outside your business doors is OUT of your control. 2013 the year of hacks? ROFL@clouds futures. Even big companies can't seem to keep data safe inside or outside (I think due to crap IT but whatever), so best to trust yourself and train employees properly. I've been in multiple companies where servers were months out of date on updates etc and management seems to have no clue this is the case, which usually happens when they weren't IT themselves at any point in their careers but just managers in general. Police your IT or get police'd (so to speak) by China hackers etc...